Modern Reforms in College Education: Challenges & Progress

India’s college education system has long been defined by a simple but deeply entrenched structure: affiliated colleges tied to central universities, following prescribed syllabi, conducting common examinations, and operating under rules that apply uniformly regardless of individual institutional strengths or needs. For decades, this model served a purpose – it provided structure and reach across a vast, diverse country. But as India’s aspirations evolved and the demands of a knowledge-driven economy grew sharper, the limitations of this inherited system became impossible to ignore. The push to reform it has generated some of the most significant – and contested – policy debates in Indian higher education.

The affiliating system: why it needed rethinking 🔗

The affiliating college model was designed at a time when the number of colleges under any given university was manageable. According to UGC guidelines, the system was originally built so that a university could effectively oversee its colleges, act as an examining body, and award degrees on their behalf. Over time, however, the system became unwieldy, making it increasingly difficult for universities to attend to the varied needs of individual colleges. Colleges found they had no freedom to modernize their curricula or make them globally competitive, locally relevant, and skill-oriented to promote employability.

The consequences were visible in classrooms. A professor teaching at a college affiliated with a public university described how, with a syllabus designed by an administrative body far from her campus, teachers were expected to deliver the curriculum as planned with no autonomy – whether students were actually able to understand it or not. This is not an isolated story. It reflects the structural reality for hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students across the country.

The National Knowledge Commission’s proposals (2007) 🔗

The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) was constituted on 13 June 2005 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, charged with advising his office on policy related to education, research institutes, and reforms needed to make India competitive in the knowledge economy. When it released its recommendations on higher education, the affiliating system was one of the first things it took aim at.

Expanding universities and restructuring colleges 🔗

The NKC recommended the establishment of 1,500 universities to significantly enhance the accessibility of higher education across India, with the aim of increasing student enrolment. A key part of this vision involved converting clusters of high-performing affiliated colleges into autonomous institutions or universities – effectively dismantling the top-heavy affiliating model from the ground up.

For colleges that were not yet ready for full autonomy, the NKC proposed two alternative paths. The first was to remodel them as community colleges that could provide both vocational education through two-year courses and formal education through three-year courses, focusing on work- or skill-based education to promote employability among disadvantaged groups. The second was to establish a Central Board of Undergraduate Education (CBUE) along with State Boards of Undergraduate Education (SBUE), which would set curricula and conduct examinations for undergraduate colleges that chose to affiliate with them. Colleges at a geographical distance from their parent university were specifically seen as natural candidates for these new boards.

A vision met with resistance 🔗

The NKC’s proposals generated immediate debate. The majority of Vice-Chancellors had rejected the policy direction given in the NKC’s Report to the Nation 2006 on higher education during discussions at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Association of Indian Universities. The push for autonomy was also widely seen by college administrators and state governments as a step toward privatization – a concern that was not entirely unfounded, given the financial implications of self-governance. Only 200 out of approximately 17,700 colleges had opted for autonomous status by that time, because proposals for autonomy were perceived as having a hidden agenda of privatisation and exposure to market forces.

UGC’s role: creating alternative governance models 🔗

The University Grants Commission has been the central regulatory force attempting to translate reform intent into institutional practice. Its approach to college governance has evolved considerably over the years, even as ground-level adoption has remained slow.

The autonomous college framework 🔗

Under UGC regulations, an autonomous college gains significant freedoms. Autonomous colleges are empowered to review existing programmes, restructure and redesign their own courses and syllabi, formulate new programmes within UGC-specified nomenclature, evolve their own methods of student assessment and examination, and may fix fees at their own level. They also constitute their own governing bodies, academic councils, and finance committees. These are not trivial freedoms – they represent a fundamentally different model of college governance from the affiliating system.

The UGC has progressively tightened and refined these regulations. The most recent iteration, the UGC Autonomous College Regulations, 2023, was framed as part of the broader National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 agenda and aims to empower colleges to offer high-quality teaching, research, and community engagement with greater academic freedom.

Graded autonomy under NEP 2020 🔗

NEP 2020 introduced the concept of graded autonomy – a phased approach in which colleges earn increasing freedoms based on accreditation performance and institutional track record. This graded autonomy, based on transparent performance metrics, is intended to gradually replace the affiliating college model, enhancing institutional quality and accountability. NEP 2020 also envisages a major structural shift: within 15 years, college affiliation is to be phased down, with a stage-by-stage procedure for providing colleges with graded autonomy.

The broader structural ambition is significant. NEP 2020’s goal in addressing the difficulties of the affiliating system is to move away from the affiliation model altogether and create a new system of research universities, teaching universities, and autonomous colleges. The existing 40,000-plus colleges are expected to gradually become Autonomous Colleges or else be phased out.

Persistent challenges: why reform moves slowly 🔗

Despite two decades of reform proposals – from the NKC in 2007 to NEP 2020 – the actual transformation of India’s college governance landscape has been limited. Several deep-rooted barriers explain why.

Resistance from universities and state governments 🔗

The UGC has raised concerns over delays and non-compliance in implementing the 2023 autonomy regulations, pointing out that several universities have been slow or non-responsive on the UGC portal in processing autonomy applications of affiliated colleges. The Commission has specifically flagged delays in processing applications within the mandated 30 working days and in issuing official notifications within 30 days after autonomy is granted.

More worrying than procedural delays is active interference. The UGC has highlighted that some universities are undermining the autonomy granted to colleges by interfering in key academic matters – including restrictions on syllabus design, introduction of new courses, and methods of student assessment – all of which are explicitly under the purview of autonomous colleges. In other words, some universities are granting autonomy on paper while hollowing it out in practice.

The political economy of higher education adds another layer of complexity. Reducing the bureaucratic burden on the sector is not easy. Any change in the powers of regulatory bodies requires legislative action, and members of legislative bodies can derive influence by pressuring educational institutions to admit children of supporters. Education, in many states, functions as a political resource – which makes genuine deregulation a threat to entrenched interests.

The centre-state tension 🔗

Education in India is a concurrent subject, meaning both central and state governments have a role. This creates structural friction. A significant portion of India’s higher education system operates under State Acts, with 70% of universities falling under this category and 94% of students enrolled in state or private institutions. Central reform directives, however well-designed, must ultimately be implemented by state governments and state-affiliated universities – bodies that may have different priorities, political alignments, or resource constraints.

Under NEP 2020, autonomy is something to be desired but ultimately circumscribed and controlled – it is in the gift of the state. Faculty autonomy, for instance, is promised in terms of designing curricula and pedagogical approaches, but “within the approved framework” – a phrase that gives educational bureaucrats considerable room to curtail the very freedom being promised.

The slow uptake of autonomy 🔗

Indian higher education has been stifled by overregulation. The system has been characterized by rote learning, high-stakes examinations, premature specialization, and limited flexibility. Breaking free from this requires not just regulatory change but a cultural shift among university administrators, state officials, and even college teachers who have been socialized into dependency on centralized control. The NKC’s warnings from 2007 about the low uptake of autonomous status have remained valid well into the NEP era – structural reform has consistently outpaced actual institutional change.

What has actually changed 🔗

Progress, though uneven, is real. The regulatory architecture for college autonomy has become more clearly defined than at any point in India’s history. Colleges that perform well in accreditation are now able to apply for autonomous status, which permits them to start new courses and programmes, set their own syllabi, and fix fees at their own level. The linkage between NAAC accreditation scores and eligibility for autonomous status has introduced a degree of meritocracy into the process.

The NEP’s Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) is another meaningful step. The Academic Bank of Credits facilitates academic mobility through a structured credit transfer mechanism, allowing students to pursue courses across multiple institutions and accumulate credits towards a degree or diploma – empowering students with greater autonomy in shaping their academic journeys. This begins to loosen, at least partially, the rigid grip of single-university control over undergraduate education.

At the same time, the proposed Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) – designed to replace multiple regulators including the UGC – promises a “light but tight” regulatory approach that prioritizes institutional accountability over procedural compliance. Whether this leads to genuine autonomy or just a different form of central oversight remains to be seen.

The road ahead 🔗

The story of college governance reform in India is, at its core, a story about the difficulty of changing systems that serve powerful interests while trying to serve millions of students. The National Knowledge Commission’s proposals of 2007 identified the problem with clarity. The UGC’s regulatory work has built the scaffolding for change. NEP 2020 has set an ambitious timeline. But between policy and practice lies the harder work – convincing universities to relinquish control, persuading state governments to prioritize institutional health over political utility, and building the capacity of colleges to actually exercise the freedoms being offered to them.

India has more college students than almost any country on earth. With half of the world’s university-age population residing in the country, bursting with aspiration but frustrated by limited access to quality institutions, the expansion and reform of higher education is a race against time. The reforms being attempted are not merely administrative exercises – they directly shape what millions of young people can learn, think, and become.

What do you think? Given that universities often resist granting real autonomy to affiliated colleges even after it is formally conferred, where should accountability for implementation ultimately lie – with the UGC, state governments, or the colleges themselves? And is a 15-year timeline to phase out the affiliating system realistic given the political and institutional inertia described above?

References

1. https://www.ugc.gov.in/pdfnews/7693390_revised_autonomous_colleges-Guideline.pdf
2. https://www.ugc.gov.in/pdfnews/0367475_UGC-(Conferment-of-Autonomous-Status-upon-Colleges-and-Measures-for-Maintenance-of-Standards-in-Autonomous-Colleges)-Regulations,-2023.pdf
3. https://pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?id=154950&NoteId=154950&ModuleId=3
4. https://knowledgecommission.wordpress.com/